NEW DELHI: A to­tal of 169 com­plaints of sex­ual ha­rass­ment at work­place have been re­ceived in pri­vate in­dus­tries since 2017, the Women and Child Devel­op­ment Min­istry has said.

The com­plaints were re­ceived through ‘She-box’, an on­line sys­tem for fil­ing com­plaints by women, work­ing in both gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tors, re­lated to sex­ual ha­rass­ment at the work­place.

A se­nior min­istry of­fi­cial said 169 com­plaints have been re­ceived through ‘She-box’ since 2017. The high­est num­ber of com­plaints have been re­ceived from Ma­ha­rash­tra (33), fol­lowed by Delhi 23.

Cen­tral min­istries have re­ceived as many as 141 sex­ual ha­rass­ment com­plaints since last year, out of which 45 have been dis­posed of, the WCD Min­istry said.

The high­est num­ber of com­plaints were re­ceived by the Fi­nance Min­istry (21), fol­lowed by the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the Min­istry of De­fence at 16, the min­istry said.

Against the back­drop of the “Metoo” cam­paign, the WCD Min­istry had last month linked the on­line por­tal to re­port com­plaints of sex­ual ha­rass­ment at work­place, to all the cen­tral min­istries, de­part­ments and 653 dis­tricts across 33 states and Union ter­ri­to­ries.

For prompt dis­posal of com­plaints on “She-box”, each case goes directly to the cen­tral or state au­thor­ity con­cerned hav­ing ju­ris­dic­tion to take ac­tion in the mat­ter.

Cases on ‘She-box’ can be mon­i­tored by the com­plainant and the WCD Min­istry, re­duc­ing the time taken in case dis­posal.